This paper investigates the extent, determinants, and implications of the political connections of firms at the peak of democracy in prewar Japan, identifying a firm as politically connected if one of its directors was simultaneously a member of the House of Representatives. We analyze the data...

Because of the unstable financial market after World War I, the Japanese financial system experienced a wave of bank mergers, which resulted in an increase in bank scale and the development of branch banking. In this paper, we explored the implications of the expansion of branch banking, using...